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Tuesday, 20 June 2017

We had a wonderful
evening together, friends and strangers about to be friends, and then it was time to
go home. They had come a long way and we set off to the station.

There were two
bicycles, that is what they apparently rode on to visit as we made for the
station. It was late, we had to be quick. On getting to the station, I was in
charge of one of the bicycles and we had difficulty going through the gates or
finding the right platform.

In the process, we
lost sight of each other and I was left with one of the strangers, in the confusion,
as we ran up and down the escalators, one of us walked the way down an escalator as it was
rolling up, I could not do that with a bicycle. We finally found our platform, two trains leaving at the same time,
for Japan.

A toilet wonder to behold

I got on the train
and found a seat as the stranger did beside me, only to be disturbed by a
hawker who through the whole journey was selling snake-oil remedies using
the context of Japanese fables of old, nothing that I heard was worth parting
with my hard-earned cash for.

Meanwhile, the
technology on the train could not be ignored, I could push a button, very much like
the stopping bell of a bus, to initiate a bowel evacuation by wireless means,
fascinating it was, that no one could tell who was filling the toilet with
waste, it could really have been anyone else.

Time and station
stops late into the night, we got to last stop and alighted. Then it seemed our
none of our other company made any of the trains, they were stuck somewhere
incomprehensible as we spoke on the phone.

A cab to nowhere sensible

I thought I could
ride the bicycle back home when I realised I had left it on the train, the
train that already left the station taking the staff with it. The other trains
were pulling out that I just could not summon the courage to tell my friend
that I had lost her bicycle.

The matter of getting
home from Japan became a pressing issue, I had to get a taxi, the first shop
had unhelpful people who pretended to offered a service of indifference and mockery, they did not care. When I found the cab office, the faces all looked familiar
but I was not sure, the drivers unperturbed in every state of lackadaisical abandon
until the controller was pointed out to me.

He asked where I was
going, my home was a place I had not been in 27 years, the cost I could not
meet because I did not have enough money and as I was thinking of booking a
hotel room for the night, I did not have to do any of that, I was saved the
ordeal.

REM - Rapid Eye Madness

For between Edinburgh
where I am, the London Underground where we boarded trains for Japan, probably
a suburb called Japan-town very much like Chinatown, a cab office that
seemed to have Nigerian drivers to wanting a ride to Isolo in Lagos, Nigeria, I
was caught in the landscape of vivid dreams, where distances are shortened and
problems can be quite insurmountable.

I had jolted out of
my sleep as the background activity coming from my computer playing Channel 4
on BBC was broadcasting the Japan season ended. Phew!

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I have many stories to tell, I am English of Nigerian parentage, I lived in the Netherlands for 12 years, returned to the UK recently but still have wander lust - the rest is somewhere online, most likely in on blogs.